Thursday, 29 October 2009

Busy Busy Busy Busy

There was an internet story of sorts written by myself that may have lead to rumours spreading I had set sail for the Maldives and was therefore out of internet coverage and I was never to be heard from again for at least twenty days.

Let the records read the following.

I have a new Wife. Well I don't actually have a new Wife but when you spend three months away from your spouse and then start living in a hotel and working together its as good as having a new Wife. I am sure Anna would agree with my sentiments. In fact I would go as far to say if you fancy having a new marriage for at least a week try doing what we did.

Mileage may vary between marriages. Please wear a seat belt.

Our new Yacht is far from finished. Remember my bold map and plan? Well this was before I had actually talked to the crew for any length of time or looked at her seriously. The Yacht is very solidly built and sea worthy but the Devil is truly in the details. Her sister ship is almost ready to sail and started being built six months before Roma therefore...... we might not be going anywhere in a hurry.

This is ok. I have new crew to learn about and more importantly write about....because we have a large crew and our Captain is all for socialising I am learning a great many things. If you want to get inside someone's head go ten pin bowling!

On Monday night we made the somewhat enthusiastic and tragic mistake of going ten pin bowling after drinking quite heavily. We descended upon the Viareggio bowling alley like a pack of half drunken alcoholic wolves. Bowls were hurled and a curious cacophony of German, Swedish, Croatian and Nouveau Zealandish swear words and bravado was heard ringing amongst the white pins falling. I look forward to sharing mini biographies of our crew. I just need to take some clandestine photos with consent of course.

There is also the rigours of learning to look busy again with new people. Because our Yacht has not been signed over to its new owner and we are not living on board we are not particularly welcome on the Yacht as it is swarming with work people. In fact on my very first day we had a breakfast meeting where we were told that we would not be going on board for the first couple of days. We were on strike.

There is something scrumptiously satisfying about starting your best paying job ever with a first day of hard striking. It tickles my corpuscles. I am sure immediate and not so immediate members of my family will also enjoy this irony.

Back to the boat, well it is big. I am all for perspectives for example on my last Yacht I could clean the whole thing by myself in two days and spend a third day doing detailed polishing and window cleaning. What did I do for the rest of the week? Good question.

On this new beast, estimates range from 5-7 days of cleaning a week with five deck crew.

Jeebus.

On the plus side today we spent a good couple of hours testing the tender and jet ski. Or Yetski if you are from the northern hemisphere. I am reliably informed our Jet Ski can do 70 knots. That is really fast. Like really really fast.

I have been leaving my camera out of my bag a lot recently which has been very annoying given all of the new things I can take photos of. I am going to make a new months resolution of taking my camera everywhere. Which reminds me.....

The new month coincides with Halloween. I have a carefully crafted and transported AWESOME costume that I will be unveiling this Saturday in Italy.

Back to corpuscles. Anna and I have joined the local gym. It seems well run apart from its insane opening hours. Fancy a Latin American dance class at 9:45 pm? This gym can help you out. Want to work out before 9:00 am ? No can do.